Career Fair Thoughts by Ceri Riley '16
In which I didn't try to acquire 50 different company shirts
There have been plenty of posts about MIT’s career fairs, mostly talking about the massive quantities of free stuff (water bottles, shirts, pens, cupcakes, etc.) you can acquire from hundreds of companies set up throughout the Z-Center. This year, I didn’t succumb to the frenzy of:
This is mostly because I’ve given away far too many company shirts to justify getting more, especially when there’s no chance of me working for most of these t-shirt bearing tech companies in this reality.
Instead, I tried to approach the career fair with hesitant optimism and figuring out if any companies 1) interested me or 2) would be interested in a CMS/7 major. I vlogged my experience and random thoughts throughout the day, so I’m not going to paraphrase all of that in text.
But I think the most important takeaway for any prefrosh reading this is to please not worry about summer jobs pre-MIT! Do what you love, whether that’s working in a lab or becoming a camp counselor or taking time off to spend with your friends and actually relax. There’s this increasing pressure to be thinking about college in your every waking moment before college, and thinking about a career in your every waking moment during college. And neither of those pressures is very conducive to happiness. So, even though I’m currently being hypocritical as I worry about careers while typing this, just remember that sometimes life works in funny ways :)